Chapter 43 #2
“It wasn't personal,” Alex says, “but I needed to deflect suspicion. I didn't intend any serious harm, and I thought I'd covered my tracks well but you saw what no one else had. You were dangerous, and you'd expose me soon enough. I had to point the suspicion back at you.
This man betrayed me, then used Elizabeth as collateral. I've been completely blindsided, and now I'm doubting everything I know, and everyone I trust.
Except for the woman who trusted me, and let me in. The woman I stand to lose. I wipe a hand over my face and glare at Alex. “You crossed a fucking line.”
“I crossed a line the moment your father signed that order,” he fires back.
I shake my head, struggling to process everything. “So your plan was to destabilize the company instead? What were you hoping to achieve?”
Alex shrugs. “I-I didn't have a plan. I just wanted Knight Enterprises to feel some pain. The same pain my niece feels every day.”
His voice catches.
“She was finally responding to treatment. The infusions were helping. She had more energy. She was going to school more often. She wasn't spending every other week in a hospital bed.”
For the first time, some of the anger drains out of him, leaving behind something rawer.
“She has a severe autoimmune disease. Her own body attacks itself. The treatment was expensive, but it was working. Then the funding disappeared.”
He shakes his head. “Do you know what it's like watching a fourteen-year-old girl smile because she thinks she's getting better? Then having to explain why she can't have the treatment anymore?”
Nobody says anything.
“I wanted your father to know that decisions have consequences. To feel the pressure. To be at risk of losing something important.”
His eyes settle on me.
“You think you'd sit back and take it quietly if you were in my shoes?”
I sting at the thought. What if I were in his shoes--if I had a niece, or a child, and they suffered just like Alex's niece had.
I'd want revenge. I'd want to make the fucker who did this feel some serious pain.
Alex doing this for personal reasons makes it even harder to punish him. Throughout my life I've seen that actions have consequences. Still, diverting suspicion to Elizabeth is a low blow, and something she never deserved.
“What about the people caught in the middle, like Elizabeth?” I ask, nodding in her direction. Her expression is hard. Lips hard set into a line. Eyes cold and unforgiving.
“Collateral damage.”
His reply breaks something in me. “You asshole.”
“Your father does shit like this every day.”
“That doesn’t make you any different.”
His expression sobers, as if he's suddenly realized something profound. “No,” he says. “It doesn’t.”
“I'm sorry for your niece, and it's awful what happened, but you could have done this differently.” Elizabeth’s tone is soft, not cutting. “You could have taken it public. There were other ways.”
“And watch it get buried and spun into something else?” Alex shakes his head. “No. This way was better. This way he felt it directly. Enough to get you, an external consultant to come in and take a look.”
“He doesn’t feel anything,” I say. “You know that.”
“Then maybe you will.” Alex gives me a look I'll never forget. All this time I considered him as my friend and the man second to me in command, but in this moment I see only pure loathing in his eyes.
He despises me, us, the Knights. He despises everything we stand for.
“You betrayed me,” I say, before I can stop myself.
He nods. “I did.”
“You stood in that lab, day after day, looking me in the eye—”
“And you stood in this company, benefiting from decisions that cost people their lives,” he cuts in.
“You don’t get to justify this,” I say, but there’s less certainty in it now.
I take in a long breath, feeling as if my entire world is breaking down. It only takes a few events, a few people, to do that.
Ordinarily, the funding being pulled for his niece would never have affected me, had he not done this. But not only did he hit the company, he hit a bullseye square in the middle of me and Elizabeth.
I understand what he tried to do but he went about it the wrong way. His anger and personal connection twisted his logic. But like Elizabeth said, he would have been better to expose what my father did and to go public with it.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” Alex replies. “I’m telling you why I did it.”
It's not going to be easy to punish him, and though I try to think like a boss, the human element of this softens the blow I want to give him.
“You’re done here,” I tell him. Because there is no way he can ever work here again.
He nods once. “I figured.”
“You’ll hand over everything,” I continue. “Access, credentials, all of it. Security will escort you out.”
“I guess they will.” He's resigned to his fate.
He puts his hands on the desk, getting ready to stand up. “Is there anything else?” he asks.
“No.” I look at Elizabeth. “Anything you want to say, Elizabeth?” I ask, softly.
Her eyes turn glassy. “I wish you hadn't done it this way.”
Alex swallows, and stands up. “I'd better go empty my desk,” he mumbles.
Elizabeth meets my eyes for a fraction of a second, but there's no sense of triumph or winning. No “I told you so” expression. She looks as sad as I feel wretched.
Alex pauses at the door, his hand on the handle. “I'm not the problem, and I didn't start this. Your father did.”
Then he walks out.
I pull my phone out and call security, after which I turn to her again.
“I—”
“Don’t,” she says, getting up. “Don't say a word. I don't want to hear anything you have to say. Ever.”
She leaves, and I'm left sitting with guilt and a sense of loss so deep, I can barely breathe.